“All right,” he said, turning toward Lion. “I’ll be in touch.”
Lion shook Breskin’s hand.
“I’ll tell you right now, man, you’re welcome by us in the town,” he told him. “I really like you.”
“Take care,” Breskin told him, and walked off.
With the wake finished and the reporters gone, Gary’s friends decided to leave. Today had been a nightmare, but tomorrow—the funeral—would be worse. As his friends faded away around him, Johnny Hayward said to no one in particular, “I’m gonna go get a bottle and get my ass drunk. . . .”
Tomorrow would be good-bye.
Chapter 42
“FUCK GARY! HE DESERVED IT!”
Johnny Hayward turned to see a ten-year-old boy who lived across the street from the funeral home retreating inside his third-floor bedroom window.
“No,” Johnny yelled back, “fuck you!”
Suddenly a reporter ran up to the teenager clad in the dark suit and shoved a camera in his face.
“Did you know Gary?!” he asked, way too excited for Johnny’s taste.
Johnny just glared at him.
“What’s your name?” the reporter pressed.
Johnny grabbed the reporter’s camera, tearing its strap, and with all the force of a major-league pitcher, he chucked it at the pavement. The overzealous reporter gasped as the camera shattered into a dozen pieces. Before he could say anything, Johnny got in his face.
“No fuckin’ pictures!” he screamed. “If I am in one fuckin’ picture, I will sue any motherfucker who prints it!”
Another reporter standing in Johnny’s path fearfully jumped backward as the boy turned around. Johnny met his friends inside and told them to come out back with him. When they got there, he pulled a joint from his pocket, lit it, and inhaled deeply. He didn’t want to be sober when he said farewell to the best friend he’d ever had. Exhaling a big cloud of smoke, he passed the joint to Lion, who was standing next to him. Before the sun rose that morning, Lion had snuck into his parents’ bedroom while they slept and snatched a light-colored suit from his stepfather’s closet. None of the boys thought they would be burying one of their friends before graduating high school, so most of them had to borrow something decent to wear. When they were done passing the joint around, they threw the roach on the ground, stomped it out, and walked inside to begin one of the hardest days of their young lives.
Inside, Gary’s casket was rolled toward the front door, to the hearse waiting outside. Johnny Hayward, Lion, Brian Higgins, Gary’s neighbor Bill Kreth, and two other friends had all been asked by Herbert and Yvonne to serve as Gary’s pallbearers. Floored by the terrible and important honor bestowed upon them, they all solemnly agreed. When Johnny went to lift the casket, he was shocked by how light it was. The whole experience began to feel like a charade. In that moment, everything seemed too surreal to process. He began to weep.
“Use two hands!” the other pallbearers told him. “Use two hands!”
“Why the fuck do I need to use two hands?!” Johnny shot back, tears streaming down his face. “He isn’t in here! It’s fucking empty!”
Suddenly Michael Lauwers walked over to Johnny, placed a hand on his shoulder, and said, “It will be okay, Johnny. Gary is here and he’s at rest.”
What Johnny didn’t realize was that his best friend had been cremated and that the box of ashes had been placed inside the casket. Michael’s kindness in the face of impossible grief gave Johnny the strength to carry on. He lifted with the other pallbearers and took the casket outside. Once their son’s remains were loaded into the back of the hearse, Herbert and Yvonne Lauwers told the boys to meet them at their home an hour after the service ended. The funeral procession then drove to the St. Philip Neri Roman Catholic Church for Gary’s final service. When they all arrived, and the casket was brought up to the altar, Father Thomas Colgan asked everyone to be seated and began reading Gary’s eulogy.
“Gary was a believer,” Colgan told the mourners. “Everyone eventually comes to Christ. For some, it may take ten minutes—for some, it may take ten years. Gary Lauwers was . . . sidetracked, perhaps, but which one of us is exempted from these pitfalls? We have the opportunity of making this right. Let us reason what has happened to ourselves. Let us understand we are not lost. Gary is not dead. He is going through a new door to a new life with Christ.”
Few were moved, least of all Gary’s family. A few days earlier, when Yvonne and Nicole Lauwers visited Colgan at St. Philip Neri to plan the funeral arrangements, the sixty-one-year-old priest told them, “I hope you’re not having his funeral here because of the good press you’ll get.”
The two were stunned by Colgan’s insensitivity. They vowed never again to set foot inside St. Philip Neri after Gary’s funeral—and they never did.
Gary’s friends saw Colgan’s eulogy for what it was—a collection of empty platitudes tiptoeing around the less savory aspects of Gary’s brief life, all offered up as a buffet for the quote-hungry journalists scribbling away in the rear pews. David Breskin sat among them, trying not to attract attention to himself. He remained respectful, keeping his notebook tucked away but leaving his tape recorder rolling for posterity.
Once Colgan finished, the pallbearers rose from their pews, lifted the casket, and began their final walk with Gary. The cameras clicked away as the boys emerged from the church carrying their fallen friend. With Herbert and Yvonne Lauwers following closely behind, Gary’s friends placed his casket in the waiting hearse, closed the door, and watched it drive away. The crowd of reporters didn’t know the limousine wouldn’t be taking Gary to a cemetery. Instead Gary’s ashes were driven back to the funeral home, where they were given to his family.
Outside St. Philip Neri, Gary’s friends congregated on the front steps, trying to ignore the reporters and television cameramen. Glen Wolf ran up to them, pulled his sport coat over his head, and flapped his arms, telling them all to figuratively fly away before following his friends back to the funeral home. Breskin caught up with them outside.
“How was the service?” he asked.
“They didn’t say enough about Gary,” Lion said, criticizing Colgan’s eulogy. He turned to Johnny and said, “You should have done it. If anyone was gonna talk about Gary, it should have been you.”
“What were you thinking about during the service?” Breskin asked.
“Loving Gary and all the things he did,” Johnny replied, “because you can’t bring him back.”
“Where do you think he is now?” Breskin asked. “Do you all believe in Heaven?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny replied. “If there’s a Heaven, he’s there. I’ll put it that way.”
“Yeah. I don’t believe in Satan,” Glen Wolf added.
“He and I always used to kid about it,” Johnny continued. “We used to say we’d probably be dead or in jail by the time we were eighteen.”
“Yeah, but he was right,” Lion said.
“During the service,” Breskin said, “the priest said, ‘Now he’s in a place that’s beyond his wildest imagination and his best dreams.’ It was almost as if he was saying Gary’s death was good because now he’s with Christ. Are you guys scared of death?”
“Everyone’s gonna die, I figure,” Johnny said. “If you’re gonna live life like, ‘Oh shit, I might die,’ then you’re always gonna be frightened. I say if you’re gonna live, have good times all the time. Go out and have a party. Push yourself as far as you can go and have a good time. If you’re worried about dying all the time, it doesn’t make any sense. If I die tomorrow, I can always say I had so many good times and I lived my life to the fullest.”
“What do you live for?” Breskin asked. “What do you love more than anything else?”
“My mom always says I value my friends too much,” Johnny replied. “She was worried that Gary would rip off the house. I was best friends with Gary. I knew he’d never do anything like that.”
“But he did . . . ,” Lio
n reminded him.
Everyone fell quiet. The echoes of birds singing could be heard in the distance, a cruel reminder that life would go on without Gary Lauwers.
“I think we should be getting back to Gary’s house,” Johnny told Breskin. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s cool,” he assured him.
Johnny let out a big sigh and turned to Lion.
“All right, you ready?”
Lion nodded and the group all began walking toward the Lauwers home, ready to grieve in private with his parents. As Breskin was heading back to his car, he noticed a teenager being interviewed by a reporter. When he overheard the reporter say he was from the New York Post, Breskin became incensed. The grieving kids he had interviewed over the last two days were having their lives ruined by newspapers like the Post, and he’d had enough of it. Breskin walked over as the reporter was wrapping up his interview and asked him why the paper kept pressing the idea of a Satanic cult in Northport.
“I think these were two or three whacked-out drug kids who adopted their own pseudo-Satanism ritual,” the reporter replied.
“Yeah, but the Post was the most crucial in tying in the connection between these kids and the Knights of the Black Circle,” Breskin maintained.
“I think every newspaper and every radio station I’ve heard made the same connection,” the reporter insisted. “Probably because of all the police reports, which initially labeled this as a Satan thing.”
Breskin wasn’t about to let him shift the blame.
“The police reports were based on the testimony of kids who were so out of their minds on mescaline they didn’t know what they were doing anyway!” he said. “The papers picked it up as gospel and ran with it!”
“The police station is still running with the same line too,” the reporter pointed out.
“Because they’re covering their asses right now!” Breskin angrily countered.
“Well, you know, personally, all I’ve got to say is there is a legitimate Satan angle,” the reporter replied. “There seemed to be a little more ceremony attached to this than the average murder, and I think the ceremony attached to it is what makes this especially horrible. So, I think that probably answers your question.”
The reporter started to walk away.
“Well, that could be,” Breskin conceded. “It’s a very complicated story.”
“Sure is!” the reporter hollered back. “Someone’s probably gonna write a book about it—maybe it’ll be you!”
Breskin could only shake his head and laugh as he walked away. This wasn’t about book deals—this was about finding the truth.
Chapter 43
“OLD ASPHALT PAVEMENT ROAD WITH logs painted with white stripes on the sides for guardrails to kind of mark the left side of the road . . .”
Glen Wolf watched as Breskin noted the route to Aztakea into the Sony Pressman’s microphone. He had finally made good on his offer to take the writer to the murder scene, and the two were now walking up the path leading into the woods. A few moments later they reached the clearing where Gary Lauwers was killed. The circular area, approximately twenty yards by thirty yards across, was mostly flat, littered with many small bushes and plants, and bordered on all sides by tall trees. Off in one corner, Breskin found the remnants of the campfire Gary helped build before his murder. Aside from a large burnt blotch on the ground, all that was left were two scorched tree branches and a portion of the wooden frame from Ricky’s old couch.
“Your average fuckin’ suburban wooden party spot,” Glen quipped. “Senator Smith’s driveway is only about a hundred yards from here.”
When Breskin was done taking notes, Glen took him about fifty yards away from the murder spot to where Gary’s body had been buried.
“Off the clearing where they dragged him to bury him, it’s about eight feet by ten feet,” Breskin told his tape recorder. “There’s a little pine tree at the foot or head of the grave. There are blue tarps around here that the police left. There’s a black spot which may have been caused by . . .”
“Fire?” Glen offered.
“Well,” Breskin replied, “it could be blood.”
Glen leaned over and sniffed the small tree at the head of the grave.
“Doesn’t smell like it’s been burned. . . .”
Breskin didn’t know it yet, but his initial suspicion was correct. The black spot next to the grave was soil stained by decomposition from the two weeks Gary had lain there.
Suddenly two teenage boys walked up to the grave site.
“What’s goin’ on?” Glen said, greeting the visitors.
“You found it?” the older boy asked. “You found where he was?”
“Yeah, it’s right over there,” Glen said, pointing to the trench behind him that had since been filled in by police.
“That’s what I thought,” the younger boy said.
“Did you know Gary?” Breskin asked them.
“I knew him from hanging out,” the younger boy said, “but I never knew his name. I knew Rick.”
“Are you surprised he was capable of this?” Breskin asked.
“Nah,” the younger boy replied. “Not on angel dust.”
“How important was Satanism to him?” Breskin asked.
“Well,” the younger boy said, “he worshipped Satan. He would read books and chant things.”
“He’d sit there and chant, ‘Satan, Satan, Satan,’ and shit like that,” Glen added.
“He was a good kid,” the younger boy said, “but the drugs and Satan caught up with him.”
“Tell me about your shirt,” Breskin said, pointing to the older boy’s Mötley Crüe tee. “People seem to be making such a big deal about these concert shirts.”
“Music does have something to do with it,” the older boy said. “Take that Sabbath song, “After Forever.” Every other line is something crazy. ‘Would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope?’ Rick always used to sing that. Whenever he was in my car, he’d be like, ‘Put on this song!’ ”
Ironically, “After Forever” was Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler’s attempt at writing a pro-Christian song to help deflect the rumors that his band worshipped the devil.
“We used to put on any Sabbath song,” the older boy continued, “like the title track, ‘Black Sabbath.’ That’s another sick song.”
“He was obsessed with their song ‘Changes,’ ” Glen added.
“That’s old music, man,” Breskin said, surprised to hear that the so-called “devil music” Ricky had been listening to was more suited to the previous generation. “Wasn’t that in the late sixties or early seventies?”
“Yeah,” Glen replied. “Then Ozzy Osbourne broke out of that group and formed his own sick shit, like biting the head off a bat.”
“There are some kids down in Texas who got rabies because they bit the head off a bat,” Breskin said, recalling an article he had read in the paper earlier that morning.
“Serves ’em right, man!” Glen exclaimed. “I love rock ’n’ roll, but I ain’t gonna go bite the head off a bat!”
“You can take AC/DC for example too,” the older boy said.
“They sing about the devil,” the younger boy agreed.
“ ‘Hells Bells,’ ” Glen said.
“Sing me some of ‘Hells Bells,’ ” Breskin asked.
The three paused.
“I only know the line ‘Hells bells,’ ” Glen replied. “It’s hard to understand what he’s singing.”
Breskin laughed.
“I don’t like the way they’re making this into a cult thing,” the younger boy said, almost mournfully.
“Get ahold of today’s New York Post,” Glen told Breskin. “They put the Midway in it with a skull, handcuffs, a knife, a hatchet, rolling papers, and all that shit.”
The New York Post had printed an article that morning by Ransdell Pierson and Paul Tharp, titled, “BARED—DEVIL DEATH CULT HQ: Post finds the head shop where Satan-worship leader
did his drug deals.” The huge, two-page spread featured photos taken inside the Midway of the items Glen was describing, along with the first public revelation of Ricky purchasing the murder weapon from the shop. The writers also continued to double down on their insistence that Ricky was a leader of the Knights of the Black Circle “cult,” despite having failed to provide any evidence for the past six days.
“Look, I’m no fan of the Post,” Breskin maintained, “but if the shit was there, it was there.”
“Yeah, but it’s every-fucking-where else, too!” Glen said.
Breskin paused. The kid had a point.
He turned back to the two boys and said, “Now, you guys have both used dust, right? I haven’t, so tell me something about it. Tell me what it feels like.”
“You don’t feel anything,” the older boy said. “You feel like you could rip your gut out and not even know it.”
“You feel like you’re floating,” the younger boy offered.
“You feel like you’re ten feet tall,” Glen added.
“Who was the first to bring dust to this town?” Breskin asked.
“Me and him,” the older boy said, surprising the journalist.
“After us, it was our friend Vinny Ivy,” the younger boy said. “Then Ricky and Jimmy tried it. They liked it and they went back to the city again and again. After about two months of going back and forth, Ivy crashed his car into a wall. They were all dusted out. He lost his license and his car. Two weeks later, he got sent to Sagamore Psychiatric Center. Even though Ivy’s car was wrecked, Kasso just kept going. He found other ways into the city. Once Ivy started hanging out with Kasso, my friend of ten years suddenly starts saying, ‘The devil wants me! I keep hearing voices!’ ”
“Ivy came over my house the night after the car accident,” the older boy added. “He was screaming hysterically about seeing devils with long beards and leather jackets riding motorcycles down Main Street. He was on my floor crying hysterically.”
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